Guide to CSIRO Pt.5/12

How CSIRO missed a development of fundamental technology. Most projects that are successful technologically are easy to explain. Everyone knows the parable "if you can not explain easily you don't know it ". Even more fundamental is; "technology so simple that people simply take it as given, and see it as obvious". And so it is with CSIRO no shortage of existing technology and no shortage of people that can explain simply, or write it extremely well, offer an opinion, but no new fundamental technology.

Fundamental technology is what drives the IP and Patents from which the cash is derived to fund fundamental science of "why is it so?". Even in CSIRO astronomy there are technologies that can be developed to aid new discoveries ( notably WiFi ).

The aim of my personal experience and need to write "Young users Guide to CSIRO" is to describe how CSIRO lost a fundamental patent and IP now used world wide. This "fundamental" technology was in wool combing and it deals with the most complicated machine from the point of mechanism and costly in terms of value adding to Australian wool processing world wide.

When project is started in CSIRO it is always shrouded in "we need to understand the underlying science" in the process. In wool combing it was; can we understand the "fibre physics behind the process". But in reality it was; "can we understand the technology and can we make a gadget " so we can justify our existence by generating an IP and spin off a patent.

Most project with CSIRO start as being "trivial and innocuous" . If you are young scientist and engineer you jump at the chance to prove your self. And that eagerness is exploitable quality. To sum up; a non-mentored individual is characterized with being ready to share every bit of knowledge. Later in life I learned true meaning of Nikola Tesla's statement: " I don't mind that they steal my ideas, I do mind that they do not have them " and when they do they do not want to share. Perhaps it was a culture in CSIRO division I was in. It got so exasperated after working for months on a particular solution only to find that it was discovery claimed by BVH, or others simply because they either hired my services or simply were present at meetings and were "spouting ideas" from simple to ridiculous trying a shotgun approach to a solution. Few month later they were ready to claim my work and my status should be " yes, my lord you are so great and generous, I bask in your shadow of greatness". As Mall Brooks - a great comedian once summed it up - "its great to be a King" so it is in CSIRO - its great to be a group leader. Bottom line is you as young scientist and engineer are simply "fresh meat" if you have not scored a status of "favourite" for what ever reason your future is limited - I will leave that to your imagination.

The lead photo is one of myself as I was in 1988 at the start of the combing project under BVH ( I love my ergonomic work place - no expense was spared -my AT Computer - they made me tough in working suburbs of Footscray - no posture or back problems ) . On the right of lead photo is the Sokolov cam which I will explain, and a model of its implementation. I hand crafted the model myself and if you read previous post you will see hand crafted models of the full comb ( I am a master model maker & tool maker, no CSIRO support staff was used they were to busy looking after RS and above in fruitless efforts ) - In 1988 I had limited, PC, 3D visualization CAD software, no analytical software ( like ADAMS) It was all written from scratch in base code of Pascal and C++, but good CNC machine and skills (no 3D printing - but interesting thing was that 3D printing was demonstrated in USA about that time see "Machine Design-1988" - I covered that in previous posts )

To put it in a nut shell most of my technology that resulted in the combing IP that was developed for CSIRO resulted in a great complement from "David" (lets call him that) my fellow room mate ; " yes, If I was asked to do that, I would have done the same, but better". It was a great compliment by a fellow CSIRO engineer, he also was great at explain my work. ( I do recall him altering my software for CTM my previous patent to include a start up CSIRO logo ).

What is the fuss about?

Its simply to redesign a cam mechanism with something obvious. To put in BVH words "You are a mechanical engineer among other things - do something". Typical words of encouragement from a group leader. I could have rephrased that to " Make another wheel, it has been 4000 years we are due for new technology". And from the technical staff - "how hard can it be just chop the top off the cam". I was basking in knowledge that I had a dream job, that I had a successful IP project (CTM), and my work direction was so simple. I was being paid "big bucks" as ES3.1, I was "ongoing CSIRO employee" ( I had no idea what that meant ) and I was also providing my own computing.

In historical terms last attempt to significantly improve combing occurred in 18th century. The English had a mechanized combing system called the "Noble comb" or a variant of it based on a circular pin bed and that they did not want to share it with the French "on pain of death". French simply went on and developed a radically different combing system based on mimicry of human action. France wins - like many other encounters, but its not all one way English did win occasionally and they made a big fuss over it ( so un-English of them, although "Lingua franca" is English ). So here we were in the 20th century, CSIRO division of wool technology asking for new "wheel" or cam technology.

Another set of instructions was -"can you do something without taking the comb apart?"... they were so confused, and at first opportunity I did what I always do "disobey and disrupt" - I took the $250,000 machine apart down to component level. Then I re assembled it - and guess without N.S.C. Sclumerger training course it worked ( favorites got the trip to France to be trained - I began to suspect that I was on way out - the trip was used in their promotional case, while I was asked to sit on an efficiency bar - that was used in my redundancy - lack of promotion. I only spent 1 year without advancing forward in my career. And that was on the advice of BVH. He would have found it harder to make my position redundant had I dug my heals in, but I was obliging and naive, such is nature of politics of the work place , CSIRO) - however every time an experimental results on CIRO comb went in wrong direction I was blamed for "fiddling" with the machine - such was the confidence in my abilities - low. ( my lack of promotion and 1 year on an efficiency bar was used in my redundancy - I was impressed with their cleverness).

Here is a technical explanation of cam improvement using only the least complex element of the comb - apron mechanics.

This is a figure of existing NSC design cam follower system. Two followers on a cam are keep in contact with the surface through the use of a spring element. It was my design intention of eliminating a spring as an active element as it causes so many problem in all cam driven machine from a car to a comb. That would facilitate high speed operation beyond "spring surge problem" which occurs due to ends of spring moving producing a spring motion - a dynamic effect ( details I will cover in my future posts )

From this figure one can see that the cam stroke can be shrunk down to a minimum distance required for other mechanisms to do their work. We have shrunk that distance from 80mm stroke (NSC stroke - green ) down to 22mm stroke (CSIRO-Sokolov Stroke ) removing a dynamic effects that hampered the reduction of stroke.

some things such as manufacturing would be easy but my division had no ability to transfer CAD ( cam shape ) into a CNC code. They did have a CNC machine and I will cover that in another session but no software - which I ended up writing. Back to explaining what was done...

Each Follower on this apron retraction mechanism has its own cams ( Sokolov Cams). It follows a path that produces zero motion in the spring. The Spring element becomes inert dynamically - something not seen in 20th century machines such as cars or combs. This also allowed me to define efficiency of the cam's also a new development in theoretical mechanics.

In this mechanism I have simulated eccentric circle - the eccentric circle - or a badly made 4000y old wheel has certain advantages. All of its dynamic derivatives are uniform - and the energy of the cycle is distributed over a single entire rotation ( not focused ). However the retain spring will flex and reduce the maximum speed at which the followers can adhere to the surface. It is a useful construct as it defines the efficiency of the pure motion being sinusoidal. On the right is the Sokolov cam essentially the same as circle but with twin surfaces to produce zero spring deflection - ie no dynamic effect.

This is a diagram of velocity profile of cam motion - one of the derivatives of the surface of the cam. The dots indicate the actual NSC 80 cam as differentiated using a numerical method on a digitizing table I developed. The Red-Brown continuous line indicated Fourier Fit to our digitizing data ( no filtering ). The area of interest is between 1.4-2.2 radians approximately, it is point at which the fibres are acquired, the rest of the cycle are of no interest to fibre handling and its purely mechanical. The problem with the original cam technology was that 0-180 deg cycle was reflected to 180-360 deg to minimize the spring compression. This design flaw in almost a century of Sclumberger development keep progress to a limited speed increment. Sokolov designed cams reduced the unnecessary destructive motion by 50% in a 22EDC cams in which half of the cycle was allowed to decay without producing unstable dynamic effects in our spring. The eccentric circle allows us to define the theoretical limits to motion a purely sinusoidal motion is 100% to that we can add desired textile motion with a trade off.

Figure shows an circle being imposed on the surface of the cam, A circle forms a definition of sinusoidal efficiency as described above by moving an eccentric circle in a rotation. A circle is a sort of "average" of the motion, the closer to the circle one comes more smoother the ride and the motion, higher the speed of operation. In my early days of this design I call it "conjugate cam" it was an imprecise early definition of this technology as I had no suitable name - I did refer to them as Sokolov cams. A "conjugate cam" technology is defined by a triangle definition while Sokolov cams are defined by a type parallelogram in which two points are pivoting on a ground and two are maintaining a constant distance ( zero compression in a spring ) - resulting in two clear curves forming two cam surfaces some of which is near eccentric circle in motion. Like I said visualization is simplicity.

This is basis of modern combing technology processing our Australian Marino clip.

Here is my own written Matlab Type Sim interface. This was later improved with use of ADAMS software.

One can see from the comparison of Fourier Fit profile to actual data how close the shape aligns. The advantage of Fourier constants is ability to differentiate higher order derivative and re-engineer the cam profiles into Sokolov cams.

The Through indicates fibre interaction on this NSC80 comb cam. On the right are Fourier Fit Terms with a standard deviation of 0.35mm from original digitized data. However the Fourier fited cam has superior dynamic performance closer to the eccentric circle motion and lower dynamic derivatives of order 3 and 4.

The stroke alone does not change the dynamic behaviour of the machine. It is the combination of short stroke and the distribution of dynamic derivatives over the surface of the cam that helps improves the machine longevity. ( or an operation at High speed for same life ) For example an eccentric circle can obtain a very high speed as it has continuous ( smooth ) dynamic derivatives. On the other hand we also have to comb wool and to accommodate other mechanisms. To accomplish this action we need to perform some tasks very quickly while others can take time during a single machine cycle. It is that rapid change that cam followers need to obey. This requirement is best accomplished by use of cam shape approaching a circle and in an NSC comb with two complementary cam surfaces to achieve a balance between machine, fibre requirements and operating conditions.

Than all of this is all academic argument for a sold path in making a new comb. It simply demonstrates that I have technologically reach a level in idea of unidirectional combing ( no reversal of the apron ) would take shape. A type of technological "bono-fideis" to have a chance to build such equipment.

This work in Fourier Fits and FFT resulted in my transition into Wavelets PhD, but then many people ask "what are wavelets??" are they useful - yes they are is my answer - you see it every day on your computer screen but in engineering and technology it will take time...But that is a story for another series of publications.

Discussion:

This technology, Dr.Kirby's work in theoretical fibre flow and behaviour combined with high speed combing trial was a good start on a project that was about to yield significant results.

I was ready to advance the project on to the next level of technology pending the completion of this series of articles. In my time at CSIRO there was some technology about , but most of it had to be redesigned to suit my project needs. I see a bright future in one in which Lab 22 and CSIRO with CRD P/L can combine and own the worsted comb technology.

It has now been 20years in which French and German engineers failed to advance this technology to the next level. I can build a new worsted comb halving the cost of what is the most complex process in fibre preparation. Let us not give this away for free.

Here is a reminder of last CSIRO effort that failed to yield results as they got rid of two people that were delivering the results. It is no wonder that CSIRO can not keep or even recognize original technology - the simpler the better.

Here is also a picture of 2015 combing technology as produced by N.S.C.Sclumberger using partial technology developed in Geelong.

Opportunity for CSIRO, CRD P/L and Australian Wool Grower is still there. Business model fromABARE is still valid. With a radical technology of CSIRO lab22 3D staff and metal printing we could produce original technology - its waiting to be picked up and carried by IP and by us. Other's have had the opportunity only Dr.Kirby and I keep the dream alive - let us conclude our technology.

Technology beneficial to Australia awaits its construction at bargain cost unchanged since 1990's as it has no glamour but heaps of technology.

Thank you for reading my post.

Refrences: Consider Reading my other posts..

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